


The Stars in the Heavens

by smartalec



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Grantaire is a youtuber, I'll add more tags as the story goes on, I'm new at this please don't judge me harshly, M/M, They all live together and it's beautiful
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-18
Updated: 2015-03-18
Packaged: 2018-03-18 10:28:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3566354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smartalec/pseuds/smartalec
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The stars are the way he navigates the world. Youtube is the way that he documents them. Grantaire has always been in love with the sky. The artist in him itches to capture it in every medium and at every time of day. He knows all the constellations. He's got his whole world figured out. It's constant, like the stars.</p>
<p>Well, it was. Until Marius had to go and fall in love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Stars in the Heavens

**Author's Note:**

> For anyone who needs a visual, this is the house that I pictured them all living in.  
> https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8301/7900577890_da868a8c78.jpg

It was all Courfeyrac’s fault, really. Grantaire’s life had been just fine until Courfeyrac invited his obnoxiously beautiful, incredibly infuriating friend from high school to come live in their house. Well, maybe it wasn’t all Courfeyrac’s fault. It was Marius’ fault as well, for moving in with his girlfriend and leaving one of the turret rooms of their old Victorian house unoccupied. Marius just couldn’t wait to move in with her until after they all graduated. No, he had to do it less than six months after they managed to find a house for rent that was actually a reasonable distance from their campus and big enough to fit all of them.

In order to keep making rent, they’d had to fill Marius’s old room, and quickly. The emergency ‘Shit we can’t make rent’ meeting was when Courf suggested his friend from high school, who apparently couldn’t stand his current roommate. Of course, most of the group knew him already, something about that activist club they all went to on Thursdays, so they didn’t mind at all that Courf had actually already asked him. Thus, an angry looking blonde boy was now thumping up the stairs and dragging what looked to be all of his worldly possessions into the sunshine filled, cozy little round room just down the hall from Grantaire’s. Grantaire himself had begged to switch into the small turret room, arguing that all the windows and the shape of it were better lighting for his art than his current room, which was essentially a glorified attic. The owners of the house had even used it as an attic when they lived there, but they fixed it up into a bedroom before they began renting it out. It still had that dark and gloomy attic feeling to it, though. But alas, Courf had already promised the friend the turret at that point, and it was too late to switch.

“D’you need a hand?” Grantaire asked, poking his head out into the small hallway. The boy was practically crawling on the floor, slowly pushing a massive trunk in the direction of his room. Grantaire wondered how he’d managed to get it up the stairs. It looked impossibly heavy, even with help it couldn’t have been easy. The boy stopped pushing and shifted around so he could look at Grantaire.

“Now, you offer? When I’ve almost got this stupid thing into my room? Not when Courfeyrac, Combeferre, and I nearly broke all our necks trying to carry it up two flights of stairs? Now?”

“Well, seeing as how I’ve been in my room this whole time and didn’t know you were moving in until that godforsaken scraping noise started up right outside my door, yes, now is when I’m offering.” Grantaire probably should’ve been nicer, moving could put anyone into a rotten mood, but the incredulity in the boy’s tone had rubbed him the wrong way. The boy glared at him before going back to crawling and shoving the trunk down the hallway. He barely made it another foot before he collapsed onto the floor.

“Fine,” the boy mumbled into the wood, “Please help me.” Grantaire stepped into the hall, carefully inching around the boy’s body. He eyed the trunk and groaned inwardly when he saw that there was barely any space between the sides of the trunk and the walls. After a moment of deliberation, he decided to just climb over the trunk so that he could lift it from the other side.

"Out of curiosity, how did you three even manage to get this thing around the corner from the stairs into the hallway? The trunk is almost the same width,” Grantaire said. The boy shot him a withering glare as he picked himself up off the floor.

“Did you not hear Courfeyrac repeatedly yelling the word ‘pivot’?” he said sarcastically. Grantaire bit back a laugh.

“Ah, he’s an absolutely massive Friends fan. He fancies himself to be the love child of Chandler and Joey.”

“Will you cut the small talk and just help me lift this thing?” The boy wrapped his hands around the handle of the trunk and glared at Grantaire through the hair that had fallen into his face. Grantaire quickly followed suit, and once he had a firm grip, they began to lift the trunk.

“Holy shit, what have you got in this thing?” Grantaire grunted, struggling with the weight of it. He may not have had muscles on par with a body builder’s, but he was considerably stronger than he appeared. The trunk felt like it had been filled with bricks.

“None of your business,” the boy muttered.

“Seriously though, it feels like this thing is full of rocks.”

“I didn’t force you to help me.”

“Because I could totally let you struggle through this on your own, Apollo.”

“Why would you call me that?” the boy huffed, his features darkening. They had just a few more steps to go before they were presented with the challenge of getting the trunk through the narrow entrance into the turret room.

“Well, you never did give me your name. And you kind of look like one of the statues of him come to life,” Grantaire said, flushing with embarrassment.

“I look like a statue of a Greek god come to life?” The boy’s voice was filled with disgust. Grantaire gave up trying to make conversation and just began the seemingly hopeless process of getting the trunk into the turret room. What felt like eons later, they finally managed to get the trunk all the way through the door.

“Where do you want this thing?” Grantaire asked, looking around the room for a space to put the trunk down amidst the stacks of boxes that littered the floor.

“There should be room for it at the end of the bed,” the boy said. They carefully shuffled around the boxes until they were in a position to gently lower the trunk into place.

“Thanks for helping me.”

“No problem, Apollo. D’you have anything else you need to lug up to our cozy little former attic?”

“Stop calling me Apollo,” the boy growled, “My name is Enjolras. And no, this was the last of it.”

“Enjolras, eh? You’ve come to live in the right house. We’ve all got French names, it’s weird. I’m Grantaire, by the way.” He extended his hand to Enjolras. After pushing a few stray strands of hair out of his eyes, the blond boy took it, shaking firmly.

“So you live down the hall?” Enjolras asked.

“Yeah, when I moved in I wanted something with roof access. Marius had already claimed this room, so I got the one next door.”

“Why’d you want roof access?”

“I’m an art major, and I like painting skylines and constellations. The perspective is better when you’re higher up.”

“Art?” Enjolras asked, his nose wrinkling in distaste.

“Please tell me you’re not one of those people who looks down on art majors because art isn’t a proper career, otherwise I’m not going to offer to help you unpack all these boxes.”

“No!” Enjolras exclaimed, his cheeks turning nearly as red as his t-shirt, “I didn’t mean to be rude. I was just completely terrible at it and my high school required it for all four years. It still brings back bad memories, you know?”

“Flashbacks, eh? Just how terrible were you?” Grantaire asked. He was genuinely curious about what could possibly have happened during Enjolras’ art classes to make him react that way. Enjolras fished his phone out of the back pocket of his sinfully tight jeans and began to look through his photos. He moved to sit on his bed, and patted the space next to him. Grantaire took the hint and sat down.

“Senior year, we got to choose a specialty art class. I took photography because I figured my complete lack of talent wouldn’t impact that and it’d be really hard to fuck up. I managed to impress myself with how bad I messed that one up.” Enjolras handed his phone to Grantaire, and Grantaire snorted with laughter at the image of Enjolras in a darkroom, hopelessly entangled in a roll of undeveloped film, in the process of falling into and taking down a string on which newly developed photos were hung.

“I did not realize the getting tangled in film thing was something that happened outside of those really cheesy teen movies,” Grantaire laughed, handing the phone back.

“I told you, my ability to mess up all things remotely artistic is truly impressive,” Enjolras said. He began scrolling through his photos again, stopping when he came to another art related one. Grantaire leaned in to look at the image of Enjolras almost completely covered in red paint from head to toe.

“I just…. How?” Grantaire said perplexedly.

“That was the day that I managed to trip over my easel and fall into a shelf, which then proceeded to break and drop a freshly opened can of red paint on my head. And of course, Courfeyrac had to take a picture because in high school, I had this phase where I wore something red every single day. He also thought my art failures were hysterical.” Enjolras ran a hand through his hair, a gesture that appeared to be as second nature as breathing to him. Grantaire caught himself smiling at the complete mess left in the wake of Enjolras’ hand, it somehow worked on him.

“I can’t really blame Courf. That is quite a story behind that photo. It almost rivals some of Bossuet’s tales of unfortunate luck,” Grantaire chuckled. Enjolras glared at him.

“My inability to do anything artistic is nowhere near as bad as Bossuet’s rotten luck. I mean, I did manage to pass all my art classes.”

“You passed?”

“Without fail, all of my art teachers felt so bad for me by the end of the year that they graded all my projects based on effort and had me write a paper on art history instead of creating a project for the final exam.” Enjolras leaned closer to Grantaire to show him a picture of one of his more pathetic projects.

“Wow.” Grantaire was starting to become painfully aware of just how close Enjolras was to him. If he really wanted to, he could just tilt his head a bit, lean in closer, and they’d be kissing. As the thought of him kissing Enjolras entered his head, Grantaire nearly jumped out of his own skin. He’d only just met the guy. Admittedly, Enjolras was extremely attractive, and Grantaire had always had a thing for blondes, but he shouldn’t be fantasizing about kissing someone he’d just met. In an effort to get away from Enjolras without making it seem rude, Grantaire stood and walked over to the nearest stack of boxes.

“Do you want help unpacking?” he asked, looking back at Enjolras. A weird expression had fallen across his strangely delicate features.

“I guess so. That stack is all books, and each box is holding a shelf’s worth. Top box goes on the top shelf and so on. They should already be sorted by subject, but if you wouldn’t mind putting them in alphabetical order, that’d be fantastic,” Enjolras said.

“Nerd.” They spent the afternoon laughing, joking, arguing, and unpacking Enjolras’ many boxes until Courfeyrac called them down for house dinner. They raced each other down the stairs, and Enjolras nearly barreled into Bahorel when he reached the landing. Bahorel scooped the smaller boy into a tight hug and ruffled his hair before dragging him down the next flight of stairs to the main floor. Grantaire caught himself smiling after them as a strange but all too familiar feeling began stirring in his chest.

“Oh, shit.”

***

Later that night, long after dinner had ended, Grantaire shoved his cheap video camera into the pocket of his jeans, opened his window, and deftly pulled his body out. He climbed carefully around until he managed to wedge himself safely between the rounded roof above Combeferre’s room and the wall connecting the window he had just climbed out of to the rest of the roof. He pulled his camera out of his pocket, pointed it towards the stars and constellations above him, and pressed record.

“Hey guys! I know I promised no more stargazing educational videos, but there really won’t be much stargazing, and this one isn’t going to be educational, so deal with it. Well, I suppose if you care at all about what’s going on in my life and with my friends, then you’ll find this educational, though why you’d care about our lives is beyond me.” Grantaire turned the camera around to film himself while he talked.

“As many of you have requested more of my face in the comments on the last video I posted, I’ve decided to give the people what they want. See, I do care about your opinions. I’m not an asshole all the time, just roughly ninety nine percent of the time,” Grantaire said with a smirk. His viewers seemed to enjoy his snark, so he never bothered to hold back when he was filming a vlog. The videos came out much more natural when he just said whatever he was thinking, anyway.

“I’m getting off track here. I have news for you. As I mentioned in my video last week, our dearly beloved Marius, the puppy dog of our friend group, decided that he was going to move out of our lovely house full of testosterone in order to live with his girlfriend.” Grantaire made a face at the camera.

“I know, right? Whyever would he want to do that? Anyway, yesterday was when the great move happened. We laughed, we cried, we hauled boxes, and Bossuet managed to fall down both flights of stairs. That was a truly impressive feat, as he had to fall across the landing between them in order to do it. Someone remind me to give you guys a video tour of the house sometime so you can understand just how incredible and spectacular that fall was. Joly, of course, was incredibly concerned after Bossuet fell, and it was actually completely justifiable this time. He dragged us all down to the ER and we found out that Bossuet had a concussion and a couple cracked ribs. Bossuet must have an incredible pain tolerance, he told Joly he was fine and tried to just walk it off after he crashed into the wall downstairs. He’s doing fine now, I swear, and Joly’s in his element, proving exactly why he’s at the top of all his classes. I told you guys that Joly’s pre-med, right? Well, if I hadn’t, you know now. Okay, back to the story. After we got back from the hospital, we finished hauling Marius’ boxes into his car and then had one last house dinner together. Once we finished, he quickly ditched us because Cosette’s father was going to help him move all his stuff in and he didn’t want to keep him waiting. Now I know what you must be thinking, how are we going to make rent now that we’re short one spectacular amigo? If you did, then you think just like Courfeyrac. When Marius told us he’d be moving out, Courf had a minor panic about rent until he found out that a friend of his and Combeferre’s from high school absolutely despised his roommate and was looking for a new place to live. Courf decided, as he does, that inviting this friend to come live with us, without actually asking any of us, would solve everyone’s problems. Courf not asking us turned out to be a non-issue, as apparently everyone in this stupid house but me already knows the guy, either from that activist club on campus, or from before uni. So that guy moved in today. His name’s Enjolras. I haven’t decided yet if I like him or not. Every time he does something that makes me think he’s really cool, he follows it up with something that makes me think he’s the biggest jerk ever. And he’s obnoxiously pretty.” Grantaire groaned and flopped back so that he was lying against the roof.

“I think I might be crushing on him a little bit. Either that, or I kind of hate him. I can’t really tell yet. I’ll keep you guys posted. The only thing I know for sure is that his face makes my heart do little flips inside my chest. It’s really quite rude. I’m gonna stop ranting now, this has probably gotten to be obnoxiously long. Later, gators!” he trilled. The cheesy sign off had been an accident at first, he’d been filming something once when his little sister called and had forgotten to turn the camera off until after he’d hung up. He wasn’t diligent when editing that one, and his traditional goodbye to Elodie had ended up making it into the end of the video. His followers, very few though they were at that point, had loved it, and so it stayed. Once he was sure that the camera had stopped recording and his footage had been saved, he shoved it back into his pocket and leaned back to watch the stars.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you all liked it! Comment and let me know what you think!  
> Also if anyone has any suggestions for a channel name for Grantaire, all the ideas I've had are completely rotten so please let me know as long as you don't mind me using it!  
> THANKS! <3  
> -Alec


End file.
